Sunday, 13th of September, 2015

Starting with something forthcoming from Melbourne pianist/electronic artist Asdasfr Bawd aka Alex Clayton, who has a new EP coming out on Solitaire Recordings soon. As is expected at the moment, it’s very footwork-influenced, but his music also draws from UK garage. Well done stuff, looking forward to the EP!

Eugene Ward is a talented young electronic musician (among other talents) who broke onto the world scene almost as soon as he put out his first EP in 2011 as Dro Carey. Drawing from footwork/juke, hip-hop, dubstep, trap and more, he managed to make dancefloor-friendly music that was nevertheless pretty demented. As Tuff Sherm he tends to pare it down to a more club-oriented take on house/techno for the most on-point contemporary labels like Opal Tapes, but Dro Carey tends to be restlessly innovative, anything from Andy Stott-style underwater house to drum’n’bass/hip-hop hybrids and more.
But earlier this year Ward put out his first album under his own name, for another cutting-edge boutique label, Where To Now? It’s still beat-oriented electronic music, but not precisely dancefloor-oriented despite being “dance” music, as it was composed for a series of choreographed modern dance pieces performed in a gallery in Chippendale (an inner-city suburb of Sydney, for the non-locals). Sampled gasps and breaths make up the beats on one track, shuffling papers elsewhere – but there are still lots of electronics, industrial beats and bass in there. It’s brilliant work from a ridiculously talented artist.

North Californian producer Lee Bannon first came to notice as a hip-hop producer, but once signed to Ninja Tune quickly began releasing a weird confection of jungle/drum’n’bass, acid and experimental electronics. He’s since changed his name to ¬b, and now his latest release is an EP under another new moniker, DedekindCut (clearly a pure mathematics buff!) – perhaps ¬b or “Lee Bannon” (also an alias) will be the home for the more ambient work, as this new EP is decidedly in the jungle/experimental camp!

Keeping it jungle/experimental, and linking back to last week’s Planet µ special, we have new sounds from Venetian Snares. As mentioned last week, last week he suddenly found himself in financial hot water, and put out a plea on social media for fans to help him out by purchasing some of his music from his own Bandcamp, which included a number of hard-to-find old 7″ singles and EPs (Moonglow, Badminton and Infolepsy are particularly recommended). This last week, he’s uploaded some of his old Hymen Records albums as well, and in thanks for the huge outpouring of support from his fanbase, a whole new album has appeared. It’s got some vintage Snares stuff on there, and is worth dropping a few bucks on!

Berlin-based Belgian/Italian duo Lumisokea have been on my radar for a couple of years. Their electro-acoustic music doesn’t fit easily into current trends in electronic music, but with its industrial feel and impeccable sound design it sits comfortably next to people like The Haxan Cloak, Dalhous, KETEV/Yair Elazar Glotman and others. The Belgian half, Koenraad Ecker, is a cellist as well as sound designer, and has released a couple of amazing solo albums on Digital Industries and 12k as well as playing in another dark post-industrial electronic duo Stray Dogs. Italian Andrea Taeggi has released minimal dub/techno as Gondwana on Opal Tapes, and simultaneously with the new Lumisokea album, his first release under his own name has come out on the Type label, exploring rhythmic minimalism on the Serge and Buchla modular synthesisers.

Labels and artists!

email: utilityfog at frogworth dot com
Utility Fog teeters on the cusp between acoustic and electronic, organic and digital. Constantly changing and rearranging, this aural cloud of nanotech consumes genres and spits them out in new forms. Whether cataloguing the jungle resurgence, tracking the ups and downs of noise and drone, or unearthing the remnants of glitch and folktronica, all is contextualised within artist & genre histories for a fulfilling sonic journey.
Since all these genre names are already pretty ridiculous, we thought we'd coin a new one. So "postfolkrocktronica" it is. Wear it.